


falling like the stars

by mythicmalasada



Series: sam stone, trainer extraordinaire [1]
Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Anxiety, Anxiety Attacks, Blood, Drinking, F/M, Gym Challenges (Pokemon), Hop is a sweetheart, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-04
Updated: 2020-12-04
Packaged: 2021-03-09 21:02:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27862749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mythicmalasada/pseuds/mythicmalasada
Summary: There seemed to be a cloud hanging over her head - dark, looming, brimming with stored electricity, sitting up on its haunches like a Mightyena about to pounce and crunch. Tired of waiting for the hit, Sam bites the bullet and takes the plunge.
Relationships: Hop/OC, Hop/Yuuri | Gloria
Series: sam stone, trainer extraordinaire [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2040073
Comments: 2
Kudos: 11





	falling like the stars

**Author's Note:**

> some notes about the main character: while this can be read as a gloria/hop (hpyu) fic, this is an oc work. the main character’s name is sam stone, and she’s from the hoenn region originally. 
> 
> a bit of background info: similarly to what happens in the pokespe manga (spoilers!) steven stone dies in the battle for hoenn. however, this time, there's no ruby and his celebi to revive him. 
> 
> not sure how many people will read this, and i know the hop/oc tag isn’t a well ventured one, but this is simply self-indulgence. nonetheless, if you like it, leave a comment letting me know. this is my first ao3 fic yet, and i'd love to hear from you. :)

There was a pit in the bottom of Sam's stomach, gnawing away at her conscience like a Skwovet on a fat Oran berry. It had been accumulating, she believed, ever since she crossed the threshold into the Galar League building located in the heart of Wyndon. The League itself had been called together to celebrate the conjoining of foreign delegates from opposite regions into the new, freshly polished Galar League, as it required an obligatory need for reformation following the events of... the previous chairman. The stoic men and women in suits and ties had been welcomed off their jets and into the region wholeheartedly, with a blinking, lively Wyndon reminiscent of the night of her Finals match: fried food stands, flashing lights, and fireworks, that of which she had narrowly avoided in her Corviknight taxi on her way there. 

She hates it. To a point (a very specific point), Sam loves being champion. But there are times when the forced realization that "champion" in Galar holds ten times the weight that "champion" in Alola did hits her and her shoulders sag with the perturbation. Nothing about beating Leon could have signaled the following insurmountable quota of conferences, business meetings, and documents - nowadays, things were all work and no play. A thought in the back of her mind tells her to just drop it all and leave. Leon would be ecstatic to have his job back, no doubt. No matter how many times he reassures her, Sam knows there is lingering resentment (understandably, too). He hadn't been champion for very long in the first place, after all, before she came and ripped the rug out from underneath him. It was the same for Hop, too, she realizes. She hadn't even meant to win the Gym Challenge. _That_ was certainly something she thought about a lot; what was she being congratulated for? Especially by him? She hadn't achieved her dream, no - she'd stolen his. 

She mulls it all over as she stares into the golden champagne bubbling in her crystal glass. The pinkish color matches her dress, silky and tight. Something never sat right with her that the chairman, even the new one, had capitalized on her physical image unlike that of which had ever been done for Leon. She swishes the ceremonial drink (a treat; 1928 Krug) around in her glass, the bubbles falling to the bottom before rising to the top once more. 

A voice rips her out of her thoughts. "Having fun?" She looks up quickly, red rising to her cheeks at the thought of being caught disinterested (and considering leave, nonetheless) at one of her own League parties. When she meets his lilac eyes, her face falls back into boredom. 

"Hello, Bede."

"An exuberant response," he scoffs, taking a seat at the bar next to her. "You look pleased, hm? Consider yourself lucky I came over. Keep frowning and you'll get creases."

Sam snorts as she takes another sip of her champagne. "My hero," she drawls, bubbles fizzing her tongue. 

The two had become - more or less - close, ever since Sam had become champion and Bede had become a Gym Leader. They spent an absurd amount of time in each others' presence, due to the inane amount of League meetings the organization set into motion. Surely Bede had suffered a similar schedule, the twinkle of his pale makeup not enough to blot the dark circles under his eyes. As just a Gym Leader, he looks exhausted. She wonders how much worse she does.

The bartender scurries over to the two of them, bowing slightly in subservience. Bede speaks up from beside her. "A strawberry vodka." The man nods and turns back to the other end of the bar. 

"Still haven't learned to say please," Sam mutters, words lost in her champagne. Bede pays her mumbling no mind. 

"Heard from that headless professor recently?"

She shoots him a glare over the rim of her cup. "I don't know who you mean."

He lets out a long sigh in return. "Hop. The one who looks vaguely like a radish? You may remember him. Loud, proud, and rather odd, to be honest-"

"-Yes," she interrupts. Her champagne glass clinks against the marble of the bar. It's a lie - she hasn't seen Hop in days. It hadn't been intentional, but her schedule packs her so busy she barely even gets the chance to call Moon, Gladion, or her other Alolan friends anymore. That didn't necessarily mean _Bede_ needed to know. The last thing he needed was ammunition in his pink little handgun. 

As she excuses herself and leaves, she sees the flash of something akin to regret in Bede's eyes, yet they quickly cycle back to indifference. He says nothing, opting instead to sit straight-backed and stare at the bottles on wall. She can't see why - it wasn't a fell stinger. Though not often, she does meet with Hop regularly. In fact, she'd planned to meet him the very same night for dinner.

Sam makes her way through the crowd, weaving through the faces in search of someone familiar. No one had been exempt from today's mingling, even Allister; she wonders briefly where he is, how he's holding up if they made him change his mask for a bowtie and cufflinks. The humorous mental image dissipates as she spots Nessa, standing by herself and sipping from a martini glass. For a brief moment, she is in awe: how is it that anyone can stand alone and still look so in place? 

"Hello, Nessa."

The Water-type user's eyes flit from a painting on the wall and meet hers. She gives a slight smile. "Hi, Sam. How are you?"

"Fine," she lies, again. "And you?"

"Oh, you know. The same." A strand of blue, finely braided hair falls gently from her shoulder to rest against the chest of her navy jumpsuit. She looks effortlessly beautiful. The tiniest part of Sam's brain squeaks out, _she would've been a better at this than me_. "Have I told you? In Hulbury, they're closing that seafood restaurant and putting in a-"

"Samantha Stone, I presume?" A foreign voice calls out to her. Her eyes whip around. The owner of the voice is a short, stout man, accompanied by a taller woman Sam immediately can infer is his assistant. The look of the two is vaguely similar to that of the previous chairman, Rose, and his assistant Oleana. Even the sharpness of the woman's left brow, the quirk of her lip - a sense of déjà vu washes over her. She tries to shake it off.

"Correct," Sam replies diplomatically. 

The man gives her a toothy smile. "Oh, I've heard all about you." Light catches his lip and Sam can see one of his back teeth has a golden cap. She rolls her eyes internally. "I'm the Kalosian delegate-" _of course he is,_ "-and you," he gasps mutedly, as if in awe: "you are a prime subject of exploration."

Sam can feel her eyebrow tick. _Prime subject of exploration. Sure._ "...Thank you."

"I'll excuse myself, then," Nessa nods politely, painfully aware of how the man hasn't spared her a glance since his arrival. Sam clings onto her words, unconsciously throwing as many _please don't, please don't_ darts into the back of her metaphorical head. Alas, her plan fails, and Sam watches as Nessa disappears within the sea of the crowd. 

"I'd like to ask a few questions," the man queries, all too eager. Suddenly, Sam _really_ regrets not telling Nessa to stay. 

"Ask away."

He signals to his assistant curtly, who produces a small notebook from under her coat. "You're not a Galar native, hm?"

There it comes again - the pit in her stomach. The weight of which had been alleviated by small talk, rich champagne, returns full forcedly. She tries not to let her fingers twitch in trepidation, at least not consciously. "No." He doesn't ask a follow-up question, so she continues blankly. "I'm from Hoenn."

He smiles as if that had been the answer he was looking for. "Ah, _incroyable_... so, you're _that_ Sam Stone, as presupposed..." The business smile melts off the man's face, replaced by something akin to a sneer. His assistant buries her nose in the notebook. Sam feels the shadow of premonition creeping and reaching up from the darkest pits of her gut and wrapping its dark hand around her throat. Suffocation without any sort of windpipe trauma. She manages to choke out:

"I'm sorry?"

"I believe you're quite aware." He adjusts his coat as if proud. "You're the accidental child of Steven Stone and Aurea Juniper, are you not?"

She can't help the reflex this time; her eyes shoot open. "...Yes." Pathetic. It had been how many years and she still flinched at the names. 

"Hmm," the man hums again. "Well, I suppose you _were_ , huh?" He laughs at his own joke, nudging his assistant. She gives him a weak smile. 

This time, she has no response. She consciously forces her fingers to loosen from their tight grip around her champagne glass, worried it'll shatter. _Accidental. Were._ She can't even malleate the consternation into anger. 

She's just scared. 

"So you've become the champion of the Galar region now, have you?"

"Yes," she answers softly, diluted, though she can't look up from the man's _Lumiose Boutique Couture_ matching tie and pocket square. Even the mere mention of her parents' names is enough to send flashing images of Christmases spent divided between Unova and Hoenn, her twin brother, Heath, the last time she ever sees him, as he turns and walks away with their mother, or Steven, the face he makes before the ice, rock, and steel Titans bring down their wrath upon him-

"-iss Stone? Hello?" 

She's thrust back into reality, this treacherous conversation, instantly. She shoots up to look the man in the eyes again. "Oh, my apologies." Suddenly, she's aware of every other person in the room; their voices, the clink of their bracelet charms against their drink glasses, the ghastly laughter of chittering conversation. 

It's daunting. 

It's _terrifying_.

"I ask you one thing, Miss Stone-" the man continues, seemingly unaware of her arousing panic, "-did you kill your father?"

 _No_ , her brain yells. _What?_ Were those circling rumors? Did Sam Stone inadvertently - or maybe even purposefully - murder her father? It's something she'd never even considered before, and it's certainly something too large to think about now, what with her brain cramming itself full of flashing alarm lights and emergency bells.

This is more terrifying than a Pokemon battle has ever been. She's been within Ultra Space and fought a wide variety of monsters, from Nihilego to Eternatus, yet this is the toughest battle she's ever had to fight. The shadow claw of dread that had been lingering on her throat like a necklace all night suddenly tightens like a rope, hoisting her off the ground. 

"I'll take your silence for agreeance-" 

"No," she chokes out, before she even registers the words. "I- I didn't." Her voice is coarse and grainy, like she'd been gargling a sandstorm. "My father died," _died_ , the words seem to hit harder when spoken aloud, "protecting his home."

The man curls his lip. His assistant pauses writing for a moment, long enough for him to say: "Do you intend to do the same?"

Before she knows what she's doing, she's pushing through the crowd and heading for the door. She can't be there a second more, not when her throat feels like it's clogged by a brick of dark discomposure and her ears are acutely aware of every sound in the hall. She can't even bring herself to mutter an apology when she slams into someone and feels the spray of glass over the exposed skin on her heels, the shatter and wetness against the floor. She just pushes through. 

There's a series of mutters as she presses the mingling hall doors open - one voice is Melony's, she singles out - something like _oh, who leaves a League party early?_ and she can't stand it anymore. The thought is more or less cemented in her head, now, as her heart feels trapped within her too-tight chest:

She's going to resign.

* * *

Humiliating. 

Even Raihan had texted her within the hour, some variation of "you okay?". Marnie had been the first, followed by Bea. They were always the most perceptive. Though, admittedly, you didn't have to be very perceptive to notice the champion sprinting out of a League party they hosted, struggling to breathe, tripping on their way into their Corviknight taxi and crying in the backseat, slumped all the way down. 

_Humiliating_. 

She sits, presently, on a stool within the Rose of the Rondelands' champion suite, face smushed against the cool marble of the table bar. She pushes all thoughts of the night out of her mind, simply trying to come fully out of whatever sort of panic she had been driven into. Her Rotom phone buzzes around her like an annoying bug, and she lazily swats at the thing with one hand. 

" _You have a message_ ," it chirps. Sam rolls her eyes. 

"I don't care," she mumbles. 

" _You have a message,_ " it repeats, in the same ebullient tone. 

"Enough already!" she shouts. The Rotom phone recoils, its eye lights flickering a bit before whirring back to life. A flash of guilt runs through her. She sighs. 

"Who's it from?"

" _Contact name: Hop, star emoji, tree emoji, Wooloo emoji, hea-_ "

"I get it, I get it!" she yelps, interrupting the machine. Her head falls into her hands, elbows pressing against the marble. 

_He probably heard. He knows what you did._

_He knows about your father._

Sam rakes her hands down her face with a groan. "Rotom, just - tell him I'm not up for eating out. He should stay in Postwick."

Rotom beeps in affirmation before flickering off and lowering itself against the bar. The clink of the screen against the marble lets off a whirling _ting_ , one that travels up and swirls around the curves of... 

Drinking glasses. 

The cupboard above the suite minibar is filled with a wide ( _wide_ ) assortment of liquor, from whiskey to merlot to martini mixers. It's... strangely appealing. She's never had a thirst for alcohol before, yet something stirs within her. Something foreign that she's certain is only apparent due to the previous happenings of the eventful night. 

_Well_ , she thinks, _you can't be embarrassed by something you can't remember_. 

She doesn't know how to mix a drink, so she pours a can of Coke into a glass and fills the remaining volume until its brimmed with the mixed brown and somewhat bubbling liquid. She tips the drink back and holds her nose, the fine liquor hitting her tongue. It's bitter. Rum is never good, not even with Coke. But there's a simplicity in the disgusting aftertaste, a pseudo reassurance.

Cheers.

* * *

She's drunk. 

Far drunker than she's ever been. 

To be fair - she doesn't get drunk very often, and she's definitely a lightweight. A few glasses of rum and coke numb her tongue to the point where she's sipping gin from the bottle and barely feeling the bite. 

She doesn't know quite where the drunkenness turned from laughing hysterically at the bad Poke-soap operas on the tele to chucking bottles of red wine at the screen. 

There's a certain veil - a line, per se - that most didn't cross out of respect. Moon, Hau, her best friends from Alola, had waited a year to even mention the topic of her father. It was a harsh reality that some people didn't see the boundary - or just didn't care - and came waltzing right over it into raw, sensitive territory. The grounds there were filled with land mines. The Kalos delegate had managed to trigger every single one. 

She's drunk, far drunker than she's ever been, and also sadder. 

The anger melts off of her like sweat and she falls to her knees in front of the fractured television, trying to pick up the shattered pieces of glass with shaking hands. She tries hard to ignore the crack that runs through the display, splitting the weatherman's face in two. The shards cut her fingertips, but she can't feel it. 

She can't feel anything at all. 

She washes the blood off her hands in the _en suite_ of her hotel room so hard that her skin is clammy and raw. No matter how hard she scrubs, though, she can't get the tint of red off her palms. Through all of her slurred thoughts, one pushes through, clear as day:

 _You killed your_ _father_.

She's in a haze. She's not thinking clearly. Because when she rips the sliding glass door to the balcony open and lurches outside, she's not the normal, pensive Sam Stone. Because she's not thinking about her Pokemon, tucked away in their Pokeballs on the nightstand, unaware of their trainer's distress. And she _knows_ the thoughts in her head aren't true; she's nothing more than an innocent bystander, or even a victim. But something in that rum and coke must have weaseled its way into her brain and taken a seat at the head of control. Wyndon's cool night air feels good - too good - on her burning skin. 

_Do you intend to do the same?_

She sees double, staggering over to the railing. The guardrail has four rungs in it, laying horizontal, uncannily similar to a ladder. 

Sam doesn't think. She just climbs. 

There's fireworks over Wyndon Stadium, bursting, exploding, lighting up the sky with cartoonish faces of Eevee and Munchlax. No sooner than they appear do the faces begin to fade, melting off the inky sky like tar in the sun. Its happy trails reach like golden tendrils through the mud, racing closer and closer to the ground. 

_They’re mocking me,_ she thinks, somewhat bitter. She feels the cold rush of wind on her face, suddenly a bit too flimsy on the ledge. _I’m going to fall, too._

With one foot forward, she leans.

* * *

Balancing a box of pizza and plastic takeout bag in one hand, Hop raps his knuckles on one of the Rose of the Rondelands' golden double doors; once before, he imagined he'd be staying in the same room. He shoves the thought out of his mind, busying himself with making up a quippy remark - I've brought a bit of _pizzazz_? With no response, he assumes she's asleep (it is well past midnight) and tries the knob. 

_Unlocked?_ He thinks. _That's weird. She must have forgotten._

The door makes a creaking noise that sounds like a downed Zubat as it opens. Hop cringes, the screech splitting the eerie silence of the suite like an axe through wood. He waits for a minute to hear movement:

Nothing.

Beating the portent, building feeling of dread in his gut down with a stick, he toes off his shoes in the hall, kicking them off by the doormat. "Mate!" he calls out, juggling the pizza box to his other hand and making his way around the corner, into the main room. "Surprise! Look, I knew you said you weren't feeling up for eating out, but I figured you need a bit of _pizzazz_ , and-"

She's on the balcony. The original thought doesn't strike any chords in his head. She's on the balcony. Yes, that's why the balcony is there. To be stood on. It takes a few more seconds for his eyes to catch up to his brain: 

She's on the railing. 

The pizza box slips from his hand, crashing to the floor and slipping over onto its side. The lid falls open, slices tumbling out and onto the cream colored rug. 

"Sam-!" he calls. His body is entirely out of tune with each other. His legs move before he knows where he wants to go, his voice speaks before he knows what he wants to say, and his heart is beating in his throat. He doesn't know what's going on - why she's up there, what she's doing, where her Pokémon are -

He just knows he has to make it stop. 

It happens in an instant - she leans forward, Hop's arms latch around her waist, cheek slamming into her back, and she's a little more tilted left than at a 90 degree angle. Hop struggles with gravity for a moment, planting his feet under the shortest rung and throwing himself backwards, flipping the scales - a guttural yell escapes his throat, as he hoists her back and towards the balcony once more - away from the freefall. He stumbles back as his feet unhook from under the last rung. On instinct, his hand flies up behind him, attempting to brace the fall. It doesn't work well, not for both of their weight combined. His hand scrapes against the coarse concrete flooring on the balcony. 

For a thick minute, no one speaks. Hop has one arm wrapped around her waist, the other braced behind him. Sam slaps a hand over her gaping mouth, wide eyed and more or less suddenly sober. Her fingers shake as they rake over her face, shell-shocked and horrified.

Hop barely registers the pain in his hand as blood seeps onto the concrete like a crimson puddle. He speaks first, though barely cohesive. "Oh - holy _shit_ , Sam... did you really, just..." 

She barely registers his words. She feels like she'd been holding her own head underwater with both hands; Hop had grabbed her by the neck of her shirt and ripped her out of barrel she had just tried to drown herself in. She can't respond. She can barely think. 

Ironically, Hop is the one that starts to cry. He brings his hand up to wipe his eyes, hissing as the blood mixes with tears. That wakes Sam up from her daze; she lifts her head from Hop's chest and turns around in his lap. "You - let me see it. Y-You're hurt." Her voice is cracked, tired, like she'd been crying or screaming all night. Hop assumes it's both. 

"My hand," he says, and lets her take his. She examines the scrape weakly. 

"I-I've got-", she stutters, "bandages i-in the bathr-room."

Hop doesn't care about his hand. In fact, right now, he doesn't care if it falls off. He doesn't know where to even begin, though, in addressing what just happened - or what _would've_ happened hadn't he showed up unannounced. At a loss for words, he just nods. 

"Okay."

* * *

Hop is sat down on the champion _en suite_ 's golden toilet with the lid down, white floor stained as a drop of red hits the tile, leaking from his hand. Sam sniffles some more as she runs a wet cloth under the tap. He can see her face in the reflection of the mirror - biting her lip so hard he's wondering why it hasn't begun to bleed. 

When she shuffles over to attend to him, Hop can't help it: he stares at her, openly, mouth pressed into a fine line. A crease appears between his brows, deep in concentration. 

Sam's face is pulled all towards her bottom lip which she pins fiercely between her teeth, her nose scrunched a bit, eyes cringed, pinned lip quivering slightly. In their relationship, Hop has always been the talkative one. The outgoing one. Sam glares at the people who mock him on the tube while he buoyantly, expressively rants about whatever it is he feels the need - for the first time in his life, he has no idea what to say, or where to even begin: he just stares. 

She tosses the bloodied rag into the sink before turning back and beginning to ready the gauze. "I-I’m sorry, Hop, I-" she snuffles, interrupting herself with every word from the onslaught of hiccups and tremors. She looks... delicate, but not in the sort where that delicacy is to be admired. She looks, almost, as if she's made of glass, and Hop's hands suddenly feel much too coarse to hold her with the fragility she deserves. She pauses the apologetic ramble for a minute to rip the gauze's end and pin it together. Still, Hop doesn't register the pain. Sam chews her lip even more. "Fuck, Hop, I-I'm _so sorry,_ "

He can't stand it anymore - her, of all people, looking like a downed Wooloo. The girl who beat him in the Semifinals, 6-1, in front of hundreds of thousands of people, looking so utterly _defeated_. From his seat - acting on impulse (of course, as always) - he reaches forwards and pulls her towards him by her waist. Her breath catches for a moment before it chokes in her throat and releases in a hearty breath as a noise not much more than a sob. Hop presses his cheek against the warmth of her stomach, feeling the cotton of her shirt brush against his nose. Sam lets go of the bottom lip caught between her teeth, and _sobs_. 

“It’s okay,” Hop says. The words sound like they hit a wall. He doesn’t know if she’s even registering what he’s saying, but he says it again. In all honesty, he doesn't know what else to. “It’s okay.”

It's not. Her fingers card through his hair, gripping lightly as she crosses her arms around his head and presses her forehead against the crown of his skull. He can feel her shake, spasm, trembling with unsteady sobs and sharp intakes of breath.

When Hop was young, his cousin, Iris, had broken a bone. The three of them - she, Hop, and Leon - had been playing in the woods behind their grandfather’s lake house. They were chasing each other around tree trunks and through bushes, when Leon sprang and scared her so bad she jumped and fell hard onto the ground. She sat in the dirt, clutching the wrist she had landed on, head towards the sky as she howled and sobbed loudly, terrifyingly, hugging her hand to her chest. She reminded Hop of Sam, then, in that moment, his own head smushed between both of her arms like she was holding it, yet she wept with a pain that seemed to hurt so much more than the break of a bone.

He was no stranger to pain. If anyone, she should have been the one to know that, the way she consoled him or sat by his side through the many times in the Gym Challenge when he had collapsed onto the curb of a sidewalk, head in hands, tears dripping through his fingers. He knew what it all felt like - the fear of failure, the grip of insufficiency - so why hadn't she come to him? Was it because he had seemed too unstable in the first place, too fragile to approach? His fingers tighten on their hold around Sam's tiny, boney waist. 

It's not okay. No, far from it - but Hop's going to make sure it will be. Eventually, agreeable or not, Hop is going to travel the world and find every piece of herself that Sam Stone lost in Hoenn; he's going to sift through the sand of every beach in Alola and find whatever she left behind. Because Sam Stone, now, like this, as he can hear her hammering heartbeat through the front of her chest, feel the tremor in her arms and twitches in her hands - is not whole. 

And if Hop can do anything, anything at all, it's rebuild. 

**Author's Note:**

> come hyperfix with me on tumblr and twitter: @samopheliastone :)


End file.
